Cosy tax deals are so toxic for the Tories

ALMOST a week has passed since George Osborne so ill-advisedly declared HMRC’s sweetheart deal with Google a ‘victory’, and still the damaging revelations keep pouring out of Whitehall.

Today the Mail discloses how, on a 2013 trip to the US, Treasury Minister David Gauke tried to schmooze a room-full of tech giants with promises of ‘low’ taxes and HMRC ‘relationship managers’ to help them avoid ‘expensive litigation’.

Incredibly, the cost to the Exchequer of this charm offensive (£5,736) was more than the total tax bill paid by Facebook (£4,327) in the UK the following year!

Meanwhile, the Chancellor yesterday dug himself deeper into a hole, repeating his risible claim that the £130million paid by Google is ‘a major success’.

He argues that he has a better record than Labour in shaking a few coppers from the deep pockets of the internet firm, a claim that would have more validity if the upper echelons of the Tory Party had not enjoyed such close links with it.

Indeed, what the Conservatives still do not seem to understand is how toxic it is for their rich and powerful tech-company friends to be paying a tax rate of three per cent, while small businesses in Britain are hounded mercilessly for every penny.

The fact that this debacle has occurred just as millions are losing sleep to fill in self-assessment forms, on pain of punitive fines if they are late, adds further insult.

Those people might care to reflect on how much tax HMRC raised annually in the UK from Starbucks (£8.1million), Apple (£ 11.8million) and Amazon (£11.9million) – all of whom have global revenues of tens of billions of pounds.